[Xesam] Relative date queries / Mono XESAM library

Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen mikkel.kamstrup at gmail.com
Tue Jan 15 11:52:23 PST 2008


On 15/01/2008, Evgeny Egorochkin <phreedom.stdin at gmail.com> wrote:
> В сообщении от Tuesday 15 January 2008 18:13:02 Jamie McCracken написал(а):
> > On Tue, 2008-01-15 at 10:02 -0600, Gabriel Burt wrote:
> > > On Jan 15, 2008 2:10 AM, Evgeny Egorochkin <phreedom.stdin at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > > В сообщении от Tuesday 15 January 2008 06:51:33 Gabriel Burt написал(а):
> > > > > What do you think of an optional 'relative' attribute on the date
> > > > > value specifying the seconds to add to the date, and allowing 'now'
> > > > > as a valid date?
> > > > >
> > > > > <lessThan>
> > > > >   <field name="lastplayed" />
> > > > >   <date relative="-7200">now</date>
> > > > > </lessThan>
> > > >
> > > > I can very well understand why user-level language needs constructs
> > > > like this, but for internal api, probably this would needlessly
> > > > complicate the spec. Somehow this resembles alowing Pi to be a valid
> > > > value for a float field.
> > >
> > > Except 'now' is a constantly changing value, making it much more
> > > suitable to represent as a special variable , and impossible to
> > > represent otherwise.
> >
> > we should probably include a "now"  for saved searches as it would be
> > impossible to do stuff relative to the current datetime without it
>
> Sounds sane. Better implement it once in Xesam backend than in all client
> apps.

Well, first of all it has never been a design criterion for the Xesam
QL that you could drop a file containing only that and have saved
search/smart folder (how about a user definable name fx?).

Another important thing to note is that we currently have an invariant
that says that a given XML query always produce the same result on the
same index. This makes testing easier (possibly with other benefits
too). This is no longer an invariant if we allow a "now" date element.

A saved search should probably consist of a .desktop file and a Xesam
query.  Where the .desktop contains a display name and such.

Another solution than defining a "now" value of the date element,
would be to define a simple templating system that could go
hand-in-hand with the .desktop file. This might be more extensible.
One could define values in the .desktop that where to be substituted
in the query xml, or what ever.

All I am saying is; please let's think this through before we define a
smart-folder system.

Cheers,
Mikkel


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